The last nine months have been a whirlwind for us.  Last winter in Central Oregon was severe with record breaking snow.  We spent December and January shoveling snow, a little skiing but mostly planning and arrainging to get utilities to the property and attempting to design a new home.  By February we had enough and headed to Arizona for 3 weeks in Tucson and another week on the outskirts of Phoenix and Sedona.  We had a great time and were able to get in 300 miles of trail riding, attend the Tucson Gem and Mineral Show and spend a few days exploring and socializing with friends.  It was awesome to escape stormy, cold weather to spend our time in shorts riding our bikes on trails and over obstacles avoiding sunburn and dehydration.  We are looking foward to returning next year with hope we can purchase a nice speciman to display in the new house.

By spring power and water had been installed to the building site on our property but we became mired in design of the house.  Our friend Caryn, designer of our Gold Beach house, stepped in to provide insight into a new approach better taylored to our desires and for the last 5 months we have been incorporating her suggestions into our home design.  The preliminary drawings are done and on September 1 we submitted our Visible Landscape Management Application to the county where we have our design, location and colors reviewed to ensure conformance with a county ordinance regarding visual impacts to a rarely visited segment of the Deschutes River.  The review takes at least 2 months and is not likely to be done until the snow starts falling so our goal is to build a driveway and septic drainfield this fall and start construction on the house and shop next February or March, weather permitting.  We are anxious to start building and move to a more rural setting.

We spent all of last spring in Gold Beach getting the house ready to sell and dealing with 30+ years of accumulated stuff.  We thought it would take a month but instead it took 3.  While there we demolished the original house.

In June our house went into escrow before it was even advertised and the escrow closed in mid August.  It’s wierd leaving a home and area we loved and spent so much time at, but life moves on and we have many avdentures to pursue that are more convenient to do from where we are now.   Maintaining two houses and properties 300 miles apart in radically different climates is not practical for us and we are relieved to consolidate into one area.  Our next consolidation effort is to sell / get rid of much that we don’t need.

The eclipse here was quite an event and totality was awesome.

Since the eclipse this area has been innundated with smoke from nearby forest fires. Our Fall plans are evolving and dynamic with the main objective being to get away from smoke.